


What Once Has Been

by CaraLee



Category: Merlin (TV), The Lantern Bearers - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Sword and the Circle - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Ancient British Culture, Dragonlord Culture, Gen, Heavily Inspired by Rosemary Sutcliff, Playing with History and Legend, Tolkein-ish Influences, and languages
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 02:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3552575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaraLee/pseuds/CaraLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many of the events that lead up to and surround the birth of Arthur Pendragon, as told by one who was there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Once Has Been

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavily inspired by and based upon a chapter of Rosemary Sutcliff's The Sword and the Circle, and The Lantern Bearers. I highly recommend both of these books, one of which looks at the Legend of King Arthur as just that, a legend, and the other which is a prequel to a more historically based twist on the story.  
> This is a sort of continuation of Dark History, though I have greatly developed my ideas for the Dragonlords since then, and even the names of characters have changed. That being said, this is written in the same sort of style and, once again, there are influences and words of Tolkein's elves among the Dragons and their lords. Also, the opening verse is an adapted version of one of Tokein's rhymes.

_“Where now are the dragon and rider?_

_For it has been many winters since they sat in the Dragon Hall,_

_Where are the children of the Cánolókë? For their hearths are cold.”_

It has been many long years since the events of which I write. Some happenings were before my birth and I tell only as they were told to me but of those things which were in my lifetime I write that it might be known what truly happened in those days, a history without the twisted shadows of Uther Pendragon.

More than two-score years before Arthur, son of Uther was born, the last legions of Rome removed from this land. Among those who chose to remain and call this land their own was Constantine, son of Maximus who had named himself Emperor of Britain. Constantine, unlike his father, was content to rule merely a single kingdom in all the land, a kingdom called by the name of Logres, wherein he began to build a great, shining city and named it Camelot.

There were many in the remnants of Albion-of-Old that were ill-pleased by this. Chief among these was Vortigern, king of Essetir, of the tribe of the Atrebates. He bore a hatred for Rome within his heart that so clouded his soul and his mind that he took himself to the Saxon warlords Hengist and Horsa and made a pact with them, sealed with his marriage to Rowena, the golden-haired witch, daughter of Hengist. With this agreement, Vortigern sealed the fate of Britain once and for all, for in setting aside his queen, the mother of his three sons, he alienated many of his own people, even as he delivered unto the Sea Wolves a foothold on our shores.

I have not the powers of my father in full, that I may See into what may be at will, and return to the present time with full memory of what I have Seen, for he was accounted a great seer, even among his own kind, long before he ever bound himself and his line to the Dragon-kind, but what I have Seen and do Know tells me that never again shall these lands be free of the Saxon-kind. They shall make their home here and abide with us until the end of time, until it is nigh impossible to distinguish one people from another.

Vortigern was a fool, but a cunning fool, well deserving the name given to him of ‘Vortigern the Fox’. Through treachery, he and his Saxon allies took the city of Camelot and laid waste to the lands around it. Constantine, the king, was burned in the market square of his own capitol and his two sons, Aurelius and Uther, at the time no more than youths who had not lived more than one score and ten summers between them, barely escaped with their lives and indeed, would not have done so had they not been aided by Calion, last of the _Cánolókë,_ whom the red crests had named Ambrosius which, in their tongue, means ‘Immortal’. Calion Ambrosius of the Dragon Hall, my father.

He set them upon the back of the greatest of the Great Dragons, who bore them to Brittany across the Narrow Sea. I have heard the account of that journey from Kilgharrah himself, and now find a bitter irony in the truth that Uther Pendragon owes his very life to those he has slaughtered, tortured, and imprisoned.

Thus did the line of Maximus remain unbroken, and Aurelius and Uther grew into manhood across the sea, taken in by the charity of the lord of Brittany, a man named Ban who, though this has been forgotten to all save a few, is a child of the line of the High Kings of Albion, a family once great, and now lost, save in Ban and his issue.

A great anger burned in the sons of Constantine, a desire for vengeance for the death of their father and the sack of their city. Vortigern knew this, and fear grew deep within him.

Those were dark days indeed, for the Saxon wolves made themselves free of the land and its people, while the northern borders were harried by the wild Scots and Pictish raiders for many a year, ere one warlord at last triumphed in the border-lands and set himself up as a lesser king in a fortress known as Caerleon, a name that the king took also for himself upon his victory.

In those years Calion, last of the Lordly People who dwelt openly among men, met his end by the sword of the Saxons. Thus the last of the first Dragonlords did fall, and Vëaner the wise, whose grandsire had been Vórimo of the Cánolókë, sat in the high seat at the Dragon Hall.

But Calion left behind him a mortal wife, Yra of the Demetii, and eight moon-cycles after his death, she brought into the world a son, and named him Balinor. Thus did I come onto this earth, and the span of my life began. I have the raven-dark hair of my mother’s people, but many have told me that I have my father’s eyes. Tára calls them dragon eyes, but Vëaner has said they are hawk-eyes, and that I have always, even as a small child, seen much and understood more.

 

As I cower in this hole in the ground, alone save for my own thoughts I cannot help but wonder why, if I saw so much, I did not See this. The only conclusion I can find is that this is not the way it was supposed to be, and that perhaps in time, the world will right itself, and light will return to the shadowed places. To this hope I must cling, as I have nothing else left to me.

Because my father was slain ere my birth, I was born with the powers of the Dragonlords already awoken within me. For this reason my mother took me, at the counsel of Tára, daughter of Hirador of the Broken Hill and Kaleth the Fortunate, mate to Kilgharrah, chief of the Great Dragons, and bore me away from the Dragon Hall to raise me among her own people, the little dark people of the mountains, the Demetii, that the red crests sometimes called the druids, confusing us with the priests of shadowed mysteries and dark rituals.

For thirteen years I dwelt there, in a hut, hidden in an alder grove in the mountains, seeing only my mother and her people, speaking their language, though my mother taught me my father’s tongue also, and the Brythonic speech that we used to communicate with outsiders when necessary.

My mother and the tribe’s Grandmother taught me much in those years, herb-lore and many secrets that have been half-forgotten, even among the People. Also, I had training from one of the Lordly People, my father’s kin, though distant, who dwelt nearby. He taught me the secrets of shape-shifting, though the transformation itself does not come always or easily to me, even today. He trained me too in the arts of magic, and though I have no remarkable power, what I can do, I do with little trouble, thanks to that which is within me, for the Lordly People are of Magic itself, as surely as they are of air and blood and earth, and through my father, I too have this gift, if it is indeed a gift, for to be so closely bound to the fabric of the world might be more reckoned to a curse. This I came to understand as I watched my teacher fade before my very eyes, until one day he came no more. I still do not know his name, for he never told me. I knew him only as _‘Golthaur’,_ ‘Teacher’.

 

Since the death of Constantine it had grown in Vortigern’s mind that there were many who wished him ill, for, as is the manner of traitors, he saw treachery behind every blade of grass. His own sons had deserted him, wroth as they were over the ill-treatment of their mother. They offered their services and alliance to Aurelius and Uther, but naught came of that, for the machinations of the witch Rowena brought about their downfall.

Vortigern’s fear grew and grew until, not long after the death of _Golthaur,_ he gathered together those few of the true druids he could find, the priests of the old religion, men who hated the remnants of Rome-in-Britain as surely as did Vortigern himself. He asked of them the way to protect himself from the vengeance of the sons of Constantine, who were even then gathering an army in Brittany to sail to the Islands and reclaim their father’s lands.

The priests consulted with the omens and commanded Vortigern the king to build him a tower upon the tor known as Dinas Emrys. For it has been said that if a man makes his stand upon that hill, he cannot fall. What is often forgotten is that the prophecy on the matter applies not to all men but to one in particular, the man for whom the hill is named.

Neither the priests nor Vortigern knew the truth of the prophecy of Dinas Emrys, so their council pleased the king and he removed to Dinas Emrys with his wife, the Saxon witch, to watch over the builders as they labored.

But it was a curious thing that every night, the laborers would lay down their tools and sleep and every morning when they arose to continue their work, the foundations that they had built the day before would be broken and scattered about the hilltop.

For a fortnight they continued in this manner before Vortigern in his anger summoned the druids to him once again and demanded to know why it was that they had set him an impossible task. When the priests returned to him with their answer it was the high priest, a man known as Ilstometh, who was of the Dubonni before he was taken by the priestesses for training, who spoke and told the king that unless he offered a blood sacrifice in the old way, the earth would continue to quake and destroy all that he built. With clever words and twisting phrases he led the king on to reveal what it was they wished for him to sacrifice. It was not a pair of rabbits, nor a goat, nor a stallion, but rather a youth, born of no mortal father.

It is in my mind that perhaps the druids wished to weaken the Dragonlords, and leave us more vulnerable than we would have been otherwise, when the battle came. I am sure they are well pleased now.

And so, as my mother worked at her loom and I scraped the cold ashes from the fire-pit in preparation for kindling a new hearth-fire, a company of the soldiers of Vortigern fell upon us and slew my mother there before my eyes, taking me up among them and bearing me back to the hilltop where Vortigern and the witch Rowena sat in their great wooden thrones, wrapped in fur mantles against the chill of the wind and, for the witch’s part, to shield the child that grew within her.

I stood before them, in their finery, garbed only in an old, ill-fitting tunic and trousers, streaked with soot and my mother’s blood. To this day my memories of what transpired on the hill of Dinas Emrys seem to me almost to be a dream, as though it were merely a nightmare that haunts you until you wake, and then remains with you as a sour taste in your mouth and bitter memories of things you wish to forget.

One thing I do remember clearly above all else, and that was the attack of the witch.

None watching would have seen it as such, but no sooner did I stand before them then I felt her mind try to enter mine. Long has she sought the secrets of the Lordly People for her own, that she might add to her power. Sometimes I think that, if it were not for that attack, I should not have been able to gather the strength to endure what came after, but her foul desire woke me from the daze I had been in since witnessing my mother’s murder, and I was determined to prevent her from obtaining what she wished to find.

I do not know how long we gazed into each other’s eyes, but no other battle has so wearied me, before or since. And it seems as though it was a lifetime before the witch dropped her eyes.

Of the conversation that followed I remember demanding, as I would demand of one of the others of the People, to know why I had been brought there to be sacrificed. I think it was surprise that caused Vortigern to answer me rather than have me slain on the spot. And also, I think, fear, for my soul was frozen within me and I spoke of my mother’s death and my own in such a voice as is used for reciting lists of spells that have been memorized. Utterly without inflection or emotion, so that no magic is performed from the speaking. I listened to his words, and then turned to the druids.

I Looked upon them, the way that _Golthaur_ had taught me, and it was easy to See with those eyes that the priests had lied, having long ago lost the true Sight if, indeed, they had ever possessed it, Knowing only falsehoods and truths twisted beyond reckoning. I tasked them with their lies there, before the assembly, and they dared not refute me, their shame plain for all to see. Vortigern demanded of me an answer then, for how to stop the shakings of the earth.

I Looked, beneath my feet, beneath the heather, beneath the earth and stone and Saw. And I smiled, for I Knew what I was seeing.

“Set your men to dig beneath the foundations they have tried to set,” I said, “Until they come to the pool of water that they shall find.”

Vortigern did so, setting aside the protests of his wife, the witch, and so it was done. I had been brought to Dinas Emrys mid-morning, through the labors of the craftsmen and the priest who possessed enough magic to assist, it was done before an hour had passed by the sun.

They had found a cavern, filled with water, and fashioned of a stone that neither I nor they had ever seen before. I did not tell them what I Knew, which was that it was the fabric of the stars, brought and placed many ages ago, when the earth had been broken and remade, to contain what was within.

It was the water itself that most saw, rather than the stone, for it bubbled and boiled and steamed as though it were set over a great fire, and the water was not so clear that any could see to its floor to determine the cause of the disturbance. Something of the water and the stone prevented me from Seeing, but not from Knowing. I turned to the druids and, for the first time, gave tone to my speech, and it was a tone of bitterness and mockery.

“And now, oh seers of secrets and workers of wonders,” I said. “Can you tell us what it is that we shall find at the bottom of the pool?”

They shuffled their feet and met no man’s eye as they admitted that they could not.

“Give the order that the pool be drained,” I told the king, “and at the base you shall find two dragons asleep, a white and a red.”

The draining of the pool took the full rest of the day, as the druid priest’s magic had no power over the cavern or its water. While the cavern was drained many of the druids slipped away, having no desire to remain. Those that did stay I believe did so out of curiosity, while those who departed did so out of self-preservation, Ilstometh was one of these. I watched him go, marking him as the one who had condemned my mother to death.

The sun was just beginning to brush the western horizon when the last of the water was drained from the cavern and indeed, there were two dragons asleep on the floor.

They were not of the race of the Great Dragons, rather they were _Angulókë,_ more akin to omens such as Unicorns, the Questing Beast, or the Great Hound of the Night, than to the Great Dragons, my kin. They were no taller than the shaggy little mountain ponies my mother’s people sometimes used, that we had received through trade with men from the north, and no longer than a horse and cart.

As the sun began setting, and dusk drew closer around us, the _Angulókë_ began to stir and become restless in their sleep, as a man who wakes slowly. And when the sun had fully set, and the torches shone bright in the hands of their bearers and the braziers glowed, little islands against the dark, they awoke in full.

For the entirety of the night they battled each other, their striving setting the earth to trembling, the flames, no longer constrained by the waters of the pool, rising high and bright in the darkness. Now the white would prevail, and then the red, back and forth for many hours they fought. The king and his court watched as if frozen, unable to look away.

The witch and I had other business.

I had felt her eyes upon me all the day, and now that we were alone, all others with their attention fixed upon the _Angulókë,_ I turned to her. We spoke not a word aloud, but much was said that cannot be heard by the ears of man. Her powers were great, and foul, enhanced by the twisted parody of motherhood growing within her. For her child was not naturally conceived, but rather brought by trickery and cruel magics that she might trap Vortigern still tighter within her web.

In truth, I do not know if I could have prevailed, for almost all was in her favor in that battle. She was well rested, I was worn and weary in both spirit and body. She was in the prime of her strength, even without the aid of her womb, while I was young yet, not fully grown nor trained. It was the dark hours of the night, a night with the moon and stars obscured by clouds, a time that embraces the darker souls and their magic, while being yet another creature for my own magic, magic of light and fire and the stars, to fight against.

Morning was my salvation that night, as the eastern sky began to grow rosy and soft with the approaching sun, the _Angulókë_ gradually slipped back into their slumber, each to their own side of the pool.

It was as if a shudder passed over the hilltop and each man shook himself, as if returning from a waking dream, and there were many who looked upon each other uneasily, as if to reassure themselves that they were not alone in what they had witnessed. Vortigern turned upon me and demanded an explanation of what they had seen, not noticing as the witch-queen retreated, not defeated as before, but rather, outlasted.

I reeled upon being released from her siege of my mind, and of what occurred next I was rather a watcher than a participant, it was as though another spoke with my mouth and I merely bore witness.

“The red dragon,” my voice said, “Is Britain, he is named Chwyliau. The white dragon is the Saxon-kind. Her name is Ealdorlegu. Every night they wake and battle for the future of these lands, but every morning when the sun rises they once more are lost in sleep, healing their wounds and gathering strength for the new battle to come.”

Vortigern scoffed, but his laughter was brittle. “Surely the red dragon will win,” said he. “This is our land. If Rome could not destroy us then why should the Saxons, my allies?”

My eyes looked from the king to the witch-queen and I felt a smile upon my lips. “You have placed the serpent in the hen-house my king. Set the wolf to guard the child’s cradle.”

As my voice spoke, I could feel the winds gathering and braced myself for what was to come. I had only once before been overtaken by the Far-Sight, it is not something that I can summon or dismiss at will, as it was for my father. It comes when it pleases and departs the same, and always leaves me as though I had fought a hard battle with no rest all the day. Since that day it has only come twice more, but that day was the time when it came with the greatest fury, and drove me before it as a storm off the northern sea drives a fisherman’s craft. Of the first part, I remember each word with clarity and shall until I take my last breath upon this earth.

“You have loosed the floodgates, oh Vortigern. The wolves of the Northern Seas are not so easily sated with a pittance of landfall. They shall press onwards, and the storm will overtake the islands of Albion, and they shall never again be the same. It shall be their land, until other invaders come in their turn, and others, until those who dwell here now are all but forgotten, bloodlines diluted by time and those who have conquered. There shall be warlords and kings, aye, and queens too, counted among the great of the earth, who shall never know the secrets that run in their veins and in the land beneath their feet. And their power shall spread, and all the lands, to the east, to the west, to the north and the south shall know their might before the sun sets.”

I know not nor ever heard the specifics of what I said after, lost in the storm of the prophecies. It was long ere they abated, leaving me worn before the assembly. My eyes, still not truly my own, turned upon the king.

“But all these things shall come to pass after your time, my lord.”

I could see the fear in Vortigern’s eyes but he leaned forward. “Tell me then, of my time.”

The sun was drawing nearer to the horizon, the soft golds of the sky becoming sharper and the gentle purples more brilliant.

“It is short, your time, and ends in fire and darkness. This hill is not for you, nor any other mortal man, but for the one whose name it bears. You may build your tower, and hide in it all you may, but Aurelius and Uther draw ever nearer, and they will not be turned aside from their vengeance, and Aurelius shall be crowned king of Logres.”

There was an uneasy shifting upon the hilltop.

“But his time shall also be short, and his brother’s, though long, shall be bitter.” I felt a brief stab of joy as my gaze was turned upon the witch-queen.

“Your son, who shall bear a British face and a Saxon name, shall rule his father’s kingdom for a span, but he too shall be cut short.” The flicker of a smile was mine, not of that which spoke with my tongue and looked through my eyes. “He shall bear his father’s fault of meddling in that which he does not understand.”

Anger and fury sprang to life in their faces.

“And after them,” the thing in my mouth turned my back to the assembly, facing the eastern hills where the sun was just beginning to truly rise. “Shall come another, greater than they, greater than you or Aurelius or Uther or Constantine himself, accompanied by he of this hill, who is greater still.”

As if in a dream I heard Vortigern demanding that his warriors slit my throat to stop my words, and the witch commanding her guards to seize me. As if in a dream I turned back to face them. The guards grabbed my arms and a great warrior drew his sword, ready to slay me there. But the prophecy was not finished.

“There shall come another, greater than any who shall come before or after, his name shall never be forgotten, nor shall his legend be extinguished. There shall come another!”

With those words, as the sun rose with dazzling glory above the hills, I felt the winds leave me. With the last of my strength, near stripped from me between the battles with the witch and the storm that had overtaken me, I summoned a fire to take me from the place, and vanished from the hill, landing I knew not where, only that it was away, before sleep took me.

 

I had grown up hearing of the prophecies of the Emrys and the Once and Future King, some of them made by my own father, though I knew it not at the time, but I had never dreamt that I would give one in my turn. To this day I ponder over the words. It seems to me that they speak of the coming of the Once and Future King as nigh upon us, even so soon as Uther’s successor.

May he come soon, whoever he may be, I long for Albion and for peace. I do not fool myself by thinking that Hunith will have waited for me, but that extinguishes not the dreams of what may someday be.

Hope is a powerful thing, one of the greatest magics of all. I pray it does not desert us.

**Author's Note:**

> The names of the little dragons both, if I remember correctly, mean fate, in Welsh and Old English respectively. I do not remember what Angulókë means exactly. I wrote most of this back in the days when I did not take very good notes about my words. I apologize.  
> There is so much world building going on in this story I can't even begin to summarize it all here, if anyone wants elaboration just ask and I shall answer!
> 
> If anyone has any guesses as to who Vortigern and Rowena's son is, feel free to let me know. :)  
> As for whether the final lines of the prophecy refer to Arthur or Merlin...Well, what do you think?


End file.
